What’s going on here? I honestly have no idea, but I do know it’s idiotic. The Council is the ultimate non-partisan body. For the President to boot two celebrities, one from sports, another from TV, off the Council as some kind of political strike can only look bad. Both are also “of color”—Joe knows that if Trump did this, he’d be called a racist. But he’d also be called a petulant child, and rightly so.
Who in the White House thought this was a good idea? It does not fill me with faith in the quality of Biden’s advisors.
Oz, like Walker, says he won’t resign. I wouldn’t either. For a President, this is the essence of punching down.
1. And I thought Navage was nuts…Those Navage commercials showing someone smiling like a zany while water is being forced up one nostril and out the other make me nauteous, but there are worse nose products for even bigger suckers. Since Tik-Tok viewers will probably believe anything, tanning nasal sprays are being advertised on the social media platform. They are supposed to be inhaled to boost the effects of sun exposure or a tanning bed. They haven’t been FDA approved, and nobody is quite sure what’s in them, but go ahead, shoot them up your nose.
Some of the products claim to contain melanotan or melanotan II, which are synthetic chemicals that act like hormones the body makes naturally. Both can have can have far-reaching side effects, like cancer and sexual reactions. Asked by reporters to comment, TikTok said, “Our community guidelines make clear what content is allowed on TikTok. Our policy on illegal activities and regulated goods prohibits the promotion of nasal tanning sprays, and we have removed the videos that you have shared with us.” In other words, TikTok doesn’t police advertising of quack drugs unless someone points them out. This is not a surprise.
You have to be exposed to ultra-violet rays for these sprays to work, so a target audience for the ads is anyone who would get in a tanning bed. That explains a lot. Remember this scene from ‘Final Destination 3″?
2. Then there is this…Khecarī Mudrā, the controversial yoga practice of sticking the tongue into the nasal cavity. Sounds fun, no? It involves gradually severing parts of the tongue and then curling it back until it enters parts of your head it was never meant to go. In the early stages of khecarī mudrā, practitioners curl back their tongues as far back as possible so that the tip touches the soft palate at the back of the mouth or even the uvula. Don’t worry, it gets easier as you practice. Khecarī mudrā is said to seal the energy of Bindu and give one supernatural powers, IF you can curl your tongue back far enough to then insert it into the nasal cavity to “lick the supreme nectar of immortality flowing there.”
See?
3. I smell popcorn popping! Donald Trump is suing 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, accusing her of conspiring with dozens of others to topple his presidency. The new lawsuit, filed in federal court in Fort Pierce, Fla., accuses Clinton, her campaign, various campaign aides, former FBI Director James Comey, the Democratic National Committee and others of racketeering conspiracy for allegedly joining in “an unthinkable plot” to falsely accuse Trump of colluding with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. Continue reading →
The Post editorial was so ethically awful that it warranted special attention. The rest of the story…
Observations:
1. As I so sagely predicted, the Republican attacks on Jackson have been declared racist by Woke World, democrats and the news media. Here are some of the comment on the Post editorial:
“I am reminded of what Jackie Robinson had to go through in 1947 when he broke the color line in baseball. How he had to take every shot, every insult, every racist thing thrown at him without complaint. And now, in 2022, Judge Jackson had to sit there and just take every insulting, despicable, racist and sexist thing thrown at her without being able to call out those who treated her with such bigotry, such callous disrespect.”
“Graham, Blackburn, Cruz and other GOP inquisitors know retention of the racist vote is crucial to the election of Republican candidates. They are intent on pandering to that component of Trump’s populist base. The senators’ disrespectful treatment of Judge Jackson doubtlessly did much to retain that base support.”
“Come on. “Not all Republicans are racists” is so 2016. ANYONE and I mean anyone who votes for a Republican in 2022 is a racist. Period. Maybe not fully racist meaning gee, they might have concerns about inflation or whatever, but racist in the end. R = RACIST.”
Nothing any of the Republicans said to or about Jackson was racist, but it doesn’t matter. The tough questioning served no purpose, but helped bolster the “Republicans/conservatives are racists” Big Lie. The justification was “tit for tat.” It is incompetent politics, particularly at a time when minorities are increasingly open to conservative candidates. Continue reading →
Yesterday’s Editorial Board screed about the hearings serve a single useful purpose for any readers with a smidgen of memory and a dash of objectivity. It serves as the equivalent of a neon sign reading, “We are shameless partisan hacks!”
Did Republicans dig up a witness (and pro-abortion activist—merely a coincidence, I’m sure) who used a three decade old “discovered memory” to accuse a a 50-year-old judge with an impeccable record as a responsible citizen and a devoted father and spouse of an attempted sexual assault when he was a teenager? No. Did they do this despite the fact that the alleged incident had no individual other than the accuser who could confirm it, nor even a definite date or place where the “assault” occurred? No. Has anything said in the hearings resulted in demonstrators calling the judge a rapist? Continue reading →
I was wrong, Prof. Turley was right. He was certain that Jackson would recuse from the case because of the screaming conflict she faced by sitting on Harvard’s Board of Overseers. He wrote,
“It would be profoundly inappropriate for a jurist to sit on a case for a school in which she has held a governing position and a role in setting institutional policies. This would be akin to a justice sitting on a case on oil leases for Exxon while being a member of the oil company’s board of directors.”
On this date in 1775, Patrick Henry, during a speech before the second Virginia Convention, made what is perhaps the most definitive statement of ethical values in U.S. history: “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
Those were the days. How many Americans would stand with Henry today? A recent poll found that the number was less than 60%, and that, incredibly, a majority of those who identify with one of our national parties would not choose to fight for their rights.
Moving on…I had to ban another Ethics Alarms commenter yesterday. These episodes follow a pattern, with smugness yielding to snark, then insults to other commenters, and finally to attacks on my good faith and alleged fealty to “Fox News.” In this case I offered a week’s suspension, with the caveat that a violation would produce a permanent ban. The response was another insult. I am determined to so what I can to combat the perception of an “echo chamber” here, but if the only remedy is allowing obnoxious and non substantive trolling, “I say it’s spinach, and I say to hell with it!”
Little known fact: Patrick Henry said that, too.
1. Slightly related: for some reason, a comment thread raised the question of whether supporting any or all of Putin’s rationalizations for invading Ukraine was more evidence of Republican Party evil. I don’t comprehend why any conservatives or Republicans are bothering to make the argument that Ukraine is not as pure as the driven snow—in short, so what? International law applies; the Golden Rule applies. Ethics applies.
Ukraine took no adverse action against Russia to justify an attack. Russia is in the wrong and Ukraine is blameless, and it doesn’t matter if Ukraine is as corrupt as the Corleones, or as squeaky clean as Utopia. However, it is legitimate to make the point that the sanctification of Zelinski and his nation as a reaction to Putin and Russia is an exercise in whitewashing.
However, it appears that the latest GOP-smearing operation involves accusing the party of spreading Putin/Russia disinformation and propaganda. Enter the New York Times, which prodded Candace Evans, the black, female GOP gadfly, thusly:
Candace is not one to be trifled with: no weenie she. Her response:
Here is one of those Times pieces. It is especially delicious that it is a Editorial Board proclamation. I know it’s six years old, but there is no reason to believe that the nation has suddenly reformed. Excerpts: Continue reading →
“As long as they’re dangerous, I hope they all die in jail if they’re going to go back and kill Americans. It won’t bother me one bit if 39 of them die in prison. That’s a better outcome than letting them go. And if it costs $500 million to keep them in jail, keep them in jail. Because they’re going to go back to the fight. Look at the fricken Afghan government that’s made up of former detainees at Gitmo. This whole thing by the left about this war ain’t working.”
Senator Lindsey Grahamin a meltdown at the confirmation hearing for SCOTUS nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, before walking out in a tizzy.
Hmmm. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that high ranking elected officials from both political parties appear to have little regard for core Constitutional principles? I’m going out on a limb here by stating that it’s a bad thing.
In fact, it is terrible.
Graham, an alleged conservative, proudly went on record as supporting “pre-crime” punitive measures (Watch “Minority Report” for a fair assessment of how that works) along with a pure “ends justifies the means” endorsement, spiced up by some “if it saves just one life” false logic. Continue reading →
[ Forgive me for using the above clip in the jokey context in which it was presented: It was the best I could find on YouTube, meaning that I could embed it easily. ]
During remarks she made in Sunset, Louisiana this week on a stop to highlight the value of bringing high-speed broadband internet to communities, Harris got herself stuck on the phrase “the importance of the passage of time” in between her usual inappropriate giggles. Then, today, yet another Harris staffer fled the coop, moving former Speaker Newt Gingrich to say,
“You know, he [Biden] may or may not have cognitive decline problems at his age, but at her age, she’s just dumb. Let’s be clear, Kamala Harris may be the dumbest person ever elected vice president in American history and that’s why people keep resigning.If you were her national security advisor, and you were competent, and you’d worked hard, and you knew what you were doing, and you watched her in Poland break up laughing when she’s asked about Ukrainian refugees, you had to feel a sense of total humiliation. So I’m not surprised that that particular advisor resigned because it’s very clear that Kamala Harris should never, ever be allowed to leave the country.”
I showed this story to Spuds, and now he’s so depressed he won’t go out for his walk.
Fezco, a four or five year old Rottweiler mix, is desperately in search of a home before he is euthanized. The Stanly County Animal Shelter in North Carolina wrote in a Facebook post that the it seeks a new owner for the dog after its owners had surrendered him to the shelter.
He was, they explained, gay. After all, he humped another male dog, not that there’s anything wrong…no, I take that back. Fezco’s previously loving owners were convinced that there is enough wrong with that to justify killing him.
At least that was my initial reaction to the news that in the District of Columbia, Federal Judge Trevor McFadden temporarily halted the Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020, which I had never heard of before. The law would have allowed children as young as 11 years old to get vaccinated without the knowledge of their parents if a provider deemed them capable of informed consent.
